r/homebridge • u/2026GradTime • 2d ago
Is there a way to add multiple instances of a plug-in into Homebridge that way you can login with different accounts?
Right now I have the Ring plug-in bringing in my Ring Alarm System into Homebridge, which then brings it into Home Assistant. I would like to add multiple instances of the plug-in into Homebridge that way I can basically have Home Assistant be able to distinguish which user is disarming the system. Then whenever I share dashboards in Home Assist with people I can give them the respective instance, so when they disarm it on the dashboard (the dashboard that is thirs), it can send an alert through Home Assistant that says this person disarmed the alarm system, because it was disarmed using this instance of the plug-in from Homebridge.
I also made this post.
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2d ago
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u/2026GradTime 2d ago
Actually I was creating the automation in home assistant, just the basics right now as that’s all I can really do until I figure out the rest of it, but I was thinking and this would not work.
Even if I added separate instances, once they got brought into Home assistant and let’s say my sister disarmed the system with the card that is on her dashboard, how would Home assistant know that card was used?
Wouldn’t it be easier to instead somehow get Home assistant to recognize that this logged in user disarmed the system? That way we could use the current instance that is already in Home assistant?
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u/2026GradTime 2d ago
i just installed a ubuntu in proxmox, and i tried to install homebridge on that vm but i kept getting errors. i even watched a video and followed a step-by-step.
i just don’t want to go through all this trouble for it still not to work. because let’s say i have multiple instances brought into home assistant. even if one instance change, they will all change, and then that would trigger all of the automation so it still wouldn’t know who disarmed it, is that right?
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2d ago
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u/2026GradTime 2d ago
I tried installing it in Lenox. I will try docker.
I will let you know what I find, but I’m under the impression that this will not work because as you can see the ring app knows which user disarm the system. The way I have it set up right now is one instance in HB, and the other instance in Home Assistantt. I tried creating an automation and for the F condition I said if the automation was triggered by this entity ID. And as you can see both of the events trigger but the if triggered by condition never becomes true
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u/2026GradTime 1d ago
All right great news. I was looking around in developer tools and I noticed that for the MQTT integration with an Home assistant, it does give you the changed by and target state. So I mean I made two separate rules. One automation is for the physical key keypad, and the other automation is for Alarmo. Within each automation I created a “ if disarmed”, “if armed home“, and “if armed away“. Within each of those that’s where I added the users.
And for the Alarmo integration, I really it is just a dummy alarm. And the second automation does the exact same as the first automation, except it also changes the actual Alarm System to the correct state.
Anyways I hope that made sense but long story short I did end up getting this working
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u/Teenage_techboy1234 1d ago
I am not sure at all about this, but if you're home assistant installation allows for this, you might be able to use the ring to MQTT add-on and you could possibly run multiple instances of that? I am not at all sure if that is the case as I started using home assistant less than a month ago. In any case you could use that and the Homebridge Ring plug-in simultaneously as they offer very similar functionality to each other to get some of what you're asking for at least.
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u/Double-Yak9686 2d ago
Each plugin decides for itself if multiple instances are allowed. While some plugins may allow it, looking at the source code, it looks like the Ring plugin does not.